Monday, May 12, 2008

If it is indeed true, as Frank Rich argues in Sunday's New York Times, that we are entering into a post-partisan era of American politics, then it is worth pondering what might be the future of FOX News -- for FOX News is almost certainly the leading partisan media source in the country today. So what will it look like in five years? Bits of data can help put that picture together.

According to the newspapers, News Corp., which controls both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post as well as FOX News, MySpace, 21st Century FOX, and many other communications media in the US and around the world, has pulled its bid to purchase the Long Island-based daily newspaper, Newsday. (NY Times report. FT's report.)

News Corp. spokeswoman Teri Everett didn't
immediately
elaborate on why the
company revoked its earlier offer, but
she hinted at
the potentially higher
price tag, saying, "It became
uneconomical for us to
continue." Murdoch had
indicated earlier that he
wouldn't raise his
bid.

Mr. Murdoch's bid was thought to be $580 million. Cablevision's bid, according to the Financial Times, is $650 million.

The word choice of his spokeswoman -- "uneconomical" -- is interesting insight. The great questions about Mr. Murdoch and the future of his company revolve around the media mogul's motives. Another way to ask this question, is to ask: Are his personal interests political or economic? Is he interested in political power or economic wealth? While the distinction between economics and politics -- wealth and power -- breaks down if you stick to it too forcefully (because they overlap so much), such categories provide a way of anticipating what to expect from Mr. Murdoch in the future. One can see a distinction, even as they help determine each other. They give us two categories to help discern the motivations at work pushing him, shaping his decisions, and creating the outline of his -- and thus FOX News' -- prospects.

As a great help, in 2006 The New Yorker ran a story about Mr. Murdoch's motivations. For example, the article asked: Will he, or won't he, move left in 2008? By extension, will FOX News, or won't FOX News, move left in 2008? The story should be read in full; it is full of interesting notes and in the end is willing to let the reader decide. Here is how it starts:

Like the legendary press barons to whom he is often
compared—Hearst, Pulitzer, Northcliffe, Beaverbrook—Rupert Murdoch has relished
playing kingmaker. In the fall of 1977, when he was forty-six and had recently
arrived in New York from Australia, by way of Fleet Street, he decided, as the
new owner of the Post and New York, to endorse a candidate for the mayoralty.
The city was in crisis: the treasury was empty; the serial killer Son of Sam had
been terrorizing the five boroughs; the labor unions were threatening to strike;
and seven Democratic candidates, including Mario Cuomo, Herman Badillo, and Ed
Koch, were vying to succeed the hapless Abe Beame.
Murdoch invited them to
his office. “Mario Cuomo was Governor Carey’s candidate,” Koch recalled
recently. “And Rupert’s preferred candidate, too, initially. Rupert asked each
of us what we would do to take on the labor unions. Mario said, ‘Trust me.’ I
said, ‘I’ll take a strike and I’ll break it. If they go on strike, it will be
illegal, and I’ll defeat them.’ ”

Koch, then a liberal congressman from
Greenwich Village, lacked both Cuomo’s eloquence and Badillo’s popularity in the
outer boroughs. According to one poll, only four per cent of voters even knew
who he was. “Rupert was impressed by what I said,” Koch said. “But he wanted to
endorse Mario nevertheless. So he gave him a chance to come back and see him
again later in the week. Again, he asked him the same question. And Mario said
the same thing: ‘Trust me.’

“A day or two later, I was sitting at home. My
campaign truck had broken down, so I couldn’t go out campaigning. The phone rang
and a voice said, ‘Is Congressman Koch at home?’ I didn’t recognize the voice,
so I said, ‘Who’s calling?’ The person said, ‘It’s Rupert.’ I said to myself,
‘Rupert . . . Rupert . . . That’s not a Jewish name. Who could this be?’ Then I
recognized the Australian accent. I said, ‘Oh yes, that Rupert.’
“He said,
‘Congressman, we will be endorsing you in the mayoral race. It will be on the
front page of the Post tomorrow.’ I said, ‘Rupert, you just elected me.’ And he
had. The Post’s endorsement transformed my campaign. I wouldn’t have won without
it.”

Almost thirty years later, Murdoch is arguably the world’s most powerful
media executive. His company, News Corporation, owns the Fox Broadcasting
network, the Twentieth Century Fox film studio, the book publisher
HarperCollins, the Post, The Weekly Standard, MySpace, and part of DirecTV, the
biggest satellite-television provider in the country. News Corp. also owns five
British newspapers and more than a hundred and ten Australian newspapers, and
controls satellite-television providers in Britain, Italy, and Asia.

The
success of Fox News Channel, which Murdoch launched in 1996, has secured his
reputation as a strident conservative, so it came as a shock to both his
right-wing allies and his liberal enemies when, in July, he hosted a
fund-raising breakfast for Hillary Rodham Clinton. During the Clinton
Administration, both the Post and Fox News pilloried the First Couple with a
relish bordering on cruelty. (Page Six, the Post’s famous gossip column,
referred to the President as the “horndog-in-chief,” and Sean Delonas, its
editorial cartoonist, routinely depicted him in his underpants.) Since September
11th, Murdoch’s media outlets have sometimes seemed like propaganda arms of the
Bush Administration, skewering anybody who dares to question the President’s war
on terror. (Last year, Bill O’Reilly, one of Fox’s most popular anchors,
suggested that the American Civil Liberties Union and the “judges who side with
them” are “terror allies.” When the Abu Ghraib prison story broke, the Post
didn’t even put it on the front page.)

My guess, right now, based on what I know and imagine, is that Mr. Murdoch will move left a bit on politics (but not necessarily economics) if (a) Sen. Barack Obama wins, and (b) if Sen. Obama pursuades him to move by the force of his popular support in FOX News-viewing areas. (a) is more likely than (b), but the thing about Mr. Obama is that, give 'em hell, he and his campaign are using issues like the economy and religion, and to a slight extent even the war, to go after hard-core Republicans whose conventional wisdom is otherwise strongly shaped by FOX News.

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